Hikaru Nakamura is off to a blazing start in the Wijk aan Zee supertournament, now known as Tata Steel Chess. With "plus two" -- two wins and two draws -- Nakamura shares the lead along side World Champion Viswanathan Anand.

On Tuesday, at the start of round four, the American ace was awarded
a 500-euro prize for the best game of the round, in recognition of his
win over Alexei Shirov the day before. The daily "Piet Zwart Prize,"
named after the former Hoogovens tournament director (no relation to the
Dutch winter holiday character Zwarte Piet), is announced just before the ringing of the traditional gong that signals the beginning of play.

It was an tense fight against Shirov, who twice appeared to give a
piece sacrifice by grabbing a pawn on d5, but in both cases the piece is
better left alone. The second time around, there was a stunning
zugzwang lurking.

Position after 41...Bxd5

If Nakamura had grabbed the
bishop, 42.cxd5, there would have followed 42...Rxe3 43.Kf1 Kf6 when
white has to return the piece for lack of moves. But he had seen Bxd5 in
advance and planned 43.Nd2 as a way to continue to play for advantage.

The game remained very close, and Hikaru was pleased with his play in the ending.

"I
think what it comes down to is that there've been several games in the
past couple of tournaments where I've been very close to winning -- or
winning outright, like in the Grischuk game from Moscow, for example --
but [against Shirov] I managed to keep it all under control and I felt
that I played it incredibly precisely toward the end, despite the fact
that I was getting low on time."

Nakamura's other win in Wijk aan Zee came over Alexander Grischuk on
the first day, a victory which he described as a fitting payback for
his tragic lapse in the final round of the Tal Memorial last November, which cost him a half point and a tie for first.

Hear Nakamura's take on the game that put him in the early lead:

Tuesday's round four was less successful, as Nakamura was reduced to
groveling in a pawn-down rook ending for a couple of hours by the
rising star Anish Giri, in his first A-group appearance.

Giri made front
page news nation-wide in the Netherlands by downing world number one Magnus Carlsen on
Monday, with black, in just 22-moves!

Hikaru had looked at the white side of this particular Catalan
variation as recently as a week ago week, recalling a line Aronian
played against Karjakin (Moscow, 2010) that is adequate but nothing
special.

"During the game, I think [13...]Qa5 is wrong -- there's
something that's better than that -- but I just couldn't remember, and I
was low on time already, so I just played it like a complete idiot, and
got into a terrible position."

He survived the time pressure and around move 30, Giri let the
queenside pawns be exchanged, after which black remained worse, but
Nakamura was confident that he could hold, with correct play.

The
draw allows him to keep a share of first place going into the
Wednesday's rest day, however in a thirteen round event, it'll take
consistently steady nerves to remain at the top of the heap. Hikaru
plans to relax and catch up with friends in the States on his day off,
and try to take his mind off of chess, if briefly. But come Thursday,
he'll be gearing up for another white game against Ruslan Ponomariov.

"The goal is to find a way to win a tournament for a change instead
of coming close and then blowing it with one or two ridiculous moves in
any given game," he explained, adding, "I feel like I can play with the
best players in the world at this point, and I just want to win."